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M51 & NGC2244 in One Night


Budgie1

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One really clear night up here on 4th March, so I made good use of it.

Firstly I started on M42 and managed 22 minutes, between trees. The results are in another thread in here. ;)

Then switched back to NGC2244 and got more data on this target to add to data from a couple of nights ago,  then this started heading behind the trees as well. So I managed 2 hours on M51 (24x300s).

The kit is ZWO ASI294MC Pro cooled to -10°C and gain of 120, SW Evostar 100ED Pro on a EQ5 mount using PHD2 & APT. Stacked with darks, flats & dark-flats in DSS & post processing in PixInsight.

For the next clear night I'll remove the 0.85 reducer/flattener on the 100ED and just use a flattener to get a better image of M51.

C&C's welcomed. :D

1167719551_NGC2244-RosetteNebula-04032021.png.1695b79eac01001d5dcb6dd47777a249.png

968942764_M51-WhirlpoolGalaxy-04032021.png.3ab71fe2632e9e6eda5227567f1d0871.png

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Thanks Martin.

I have to be honest, I'd never noticed the tail before I processed this and I first thought there was something wrong in the stacking because of the straight line at the end of cloud above it. :icon_rolleyes:

Definitely worth trying it with all 900mm FL of the scope on the next clear night.  

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6 hours ago, adyj1 said:

Great pictures! What have you done to your EQ5 to get results like this? 

Thanks,

Last weekend I striped it down completely, doing one axis at a time. 

I cleaned off all the old sticky grease and put new bearings in the worm drives and changed the main large bearing on the RA axis. The thrust bearing on the RA was cleaned and re-greased then reassembled on the shaft. I then set the backlash on the worm gears and put it all back together.

When I took the worm drives off the mount and spun the shaft, I could feel the worm drive bearings were "notchy", so they definitely needed changed.  

It took me about 4 hours in total and when I was imaging M51 above PHD2 was reporting the RMS error of 0.63. It was down to 0.38 at one point, which is best it's ever been, but it didn't stay there. 

I got the bearings from Simply Bearings and they cost about £50 for all of them.

The grease I used is Geoptik EQ Mount Grease and Martin Pyott does a good 5 part set of tuning videos for the EQ5, complete with all the links and bearing numbers.

I was having issues with guiding before I rebuilt the mount and I've only had a couple of sessions since, so I'm still unsure about how much difference it's made. I thought I would try a rebuild at the cost of £50 (I already had the grease) before deciding whether to get a new HEQ5 now, or wait until they're more available, plus the price of the HEQ5 has just increased by about £200.

It's worth a go, even if you only change the worn drive bearings, put new grease in the mount and set the worm gear backlash. ;)

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